After spending about $70 of my grocery bill on Gatorade, bottled water, vitamin water, and diet coke, I realized that we had a problem. A few days later, I noticed powdered individual Gatorade packets listed at $4.96 for a packet of 8, which would probably be added to a bottle of water. Between the bottled water and the packet, a 12 oz. drink that you made yourself would cost over a dollar.

Something had to be done! So I wracked my brain.

How about filtering my own tap water? I heard rumors that much of the bottled water is just plain old filtered tap water. Could it possibly be true?

We have filtered water from our refrigerator, but that took too long to fill up larger containers so I considered an installed filtration system for the kitchen faucet. I decided that was too much work.

I bought a few nice new travel sports drink containers, a few new pitchers for the fridge, and some bulk drink mixes. The family has hardly even missed the bottle water and sports drinks. We even served iced tea and lemonade made from filtered water and powder to guests recently. What a shocker that we did not have a whole counter full of bottled drinks!

We are saving a ton of money and drinking more water. Let me know your thoughts on this. Especially suggest some good deals and ideas on the subject.

PS. The plastic used for the Brita Water filters appears to be safe. If you also upgrade all of your travel and home containers to safe plastic or stainless steel, you will reduce the chance of any plastic toxins leaching into your drinking water. There is yet another reason to do it yourself.